Telstar 4 is Down 368
An anonymous reader writes "Sometime this morning (Sept. 19) Telstar 4 had a major onboard failure. I just checked a few minutes ago and there are CW carriers up on 11700 MHz V & 12200 MHz H, so the spacecraft would appear to still be in its orbital slot - just no traffic. The Loral Skynet site has no mention of this yet, but supposedly Telstar 8 was already scheduled to replace T4, so they may just speed the process up. This turn of events will no doubt be of some small concern to Intelsat, who recently agreed to purchase most of Loral's US domestic fleet, including T4."
Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is (Score:1, Informative)
This may affect you because (Score:5, Informative)
Was there really anything important on there? (Score:5, Informative)
Crisis Averted! (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously the satellite industry has its priorities straight.
What Telstar 4 is..... (Score:2, Informative)
Telstar 4
77 W (in 2003)
Began service: 11/95
Transponders: 24 C-band @ 36 MHz
16 Ku-band @ 54MHz
Coverage: Continental US, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and into Canada.
Markets: Robust broadcast and syndication neighborhood anchored by ABC and CBS; host to SNG, data and distance learning applications.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Telstar 4 info (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.lyngsat.com/t4.shtml [lyngsat.com]
A Link that Says a Bit More. (Score:4, Informative)
Here... [businesswire.com]
And here... [billingsgazette.com]
de-TV Geeked translation (Score:5, Informative)
The main power bus on Telstar 4 died. This means it does not have the power to rebroadcast (bounce) the signals back to earth.
Kinda like the Enterprise losing the warp drive, but still having impulse power to putter around.
These birds cost US$200-300 million to build and US$100-150 million to launch. Failure of this type is a huge loss for Intelsat and a costly transition for the broadcasters.
The companies that used that bird need to switch to other ones. This causes two problems.
1) Antennas - The recievers all need to repoint their antennas at new birds. This is a pain in the ass to do precisely.
2) Bumps - Due to agreements, some companies on Telstar 4 have the right to 'bump' others off the backup birds and take their places. If you get bumped, you are fuxxored.
Make some sense now?
Reading the links is the Rosetta for this story. (Score:5, Informative)
T4 is a broadcast Satalite used to transmit the raw station feeds from the central offices (read networks) to local broadcasters (cable, local ABC affiliate etc).
What Data T4 is responcible for:
Robust broadcast and syndication neighborhood anchored by ABC and CBS; host to SNG, data and distance learning applications. (Also hosted is Spice Channel and two other adult viewing stations which are not mentioned on the main site)
Where it effects:
The central portion of North America
The origional poster mentions the Carrier frequencies that the data is normally transfered on. The poster also mentions that there is no data being broadcast, just the main freq.
I have no way of confirming this myself, and dont see anything about it on any of the satalite pages. All they report is that a satalite is up and running (i.e. the Carrier frequency is present, but nothing on the data being transmitted)
As for the information on replacing the old T4 with T8, well T8 is currently handling south america, and the information I could find on google about the sale of the out dated satalites it vague at best.
Who does this effect:
Possably people out in the midwest are not getting any TV on their cable boxes.
mostlikly its effecting the cable companies and local affiliates who need to reroute to another satalite, and the central offices which also need to switch the feeds to other sat feed providers.
In the end nothing is confirmed.
Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is (Score:2, Informative)
Skynet confirms its dead (Score:5, Informative)
"Telstar 4 experienced a short circuit of primary its power bus and is not fixable. This satellite is offline permanently."
The real tragedy (Score:2, Informative)
Dear submitter, (Score:2, Informative)
Short Article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is (Score:4, Informative)
Re:de-TV Geeked translation (Score:2, Informative)
It's increasingly common for cable operators to add their own ads to the channel (by agreement) which override any nationwide ads on the channel. So, even though the signal is lost, you can still enjoy watching the vast of amazing offers at Joe's Bar&Grill, 10 Parkavenue.. No worries there, then.
NOT offtopic!!! (Score:5, Informative)
The 'Telstar' the parent refers to is the 1962 pop instrumental piece written by by Joe Meek and performed by the Tornadoes who became the first U.K. band to have a #1 hit in the States, even before the Beatles. 'Telstar' was inspired by the launch of Telstar 1.
Of course, this is way, way before 99.9% of the Slashdot readership were born so I'm not suprised it was missed. Hell, even I was only 1 year old.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
However, most of the major users of such a big satellite like national TV/Radio concerns know that it's only a matter of time before something like this happens to a satellite, so they've got automatic switchovers at their affiliates that keep them flowing even if a network show is on at the time. The problem comes to anybody who has "preemptable" satellite space for today, because they may just find themselves hit somebody who's willing to pay the premium fee to bump them. Other users in a pinch might just send something that normally goes over a satellite through landlines today, etc.
It's a major sudden redirection of large ammounts of traffic in the national communication infrastructure, although not exactly earth shaking because most people won't see much of a disruption. (Galaxy IV was a bit more newsworthy fo a failure a few years ago because it took out most of SkyTel's pagers...)
So, it's interesting to some people and other people don't care. Isn't that what
Re:So what does this mean to the average user? (Score:3, Informative)
So, anybody who's actually making money with their satellite usage has made backup contracts that say when T4 goes down, they immedately get moved to another spot to become their full-time home. For example, I've seen elsewhere that several pron channels that were on Telestar 4 got moved to Telestar 6. The problem comes for whomever thought they were gonna be using those slots on T6... 1. They better make sure they don't accidently relay a porn channel, 2. They better find another place to send whatever they were gonna be sending.
Eventually the ripple effect goes to the end of the line where somebody just might find themselves with nowhere to go. They're the ones out of business because even if they can find another place to go in a few days, they've lost all credibility.
Re:This may affect you because (Score:4, Informative)
Those transponder slots that are targeted by such an agreement are used for short-term "pre-emptable" uses, such as a TV station that needs to broadcast two or three live news reports from another city, or maybe even a small-time sports game. Those people are outta luck on a day like this, because they're gonna get bumped.
Telstar 4 down, ABC will now suck even more. (Score:1, Informative)
Now... the worst part is that emergency bandwidth doesn't come cheap, especially if it is up in space. Now... this led me to an interesting idea. Why don't they have "proxy satellites"... Basically... a small satellite that can change orbits and has the ability to simply relay signals to nearby satellites. Granted... Complexity would jump up a bit, but at least it would give people time to migrate there dishes instead of this emergency, the sky is falling. I bet the price tag for such a device would be well under the 80 million that most satellites cost, and I bet you could launch it as a companion device(ie... just in case).
Re:de-TV Geeked translation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is (Score:5, Informative)